That Was Before

by Dan Lawton

  Benji pushed his way through the line—most people let him through, though some were not as willing; every group had the stubborn ones who had to protest to prove a point or disagree with the majority for the sake of an argument. Some people got off on that shit. But now was not the time. A mother masked her child’s face with her hand; a different man told Benji to stop being a dick. Finally, a flight attendant angrily stepped forward and cut off his line to the exit.

  “Sir!” she said. “The way you’re acting is entirely inappropriate. Please be—”

  Benji lifted a hand to cut her off, and she gasped as if he had used a racial slur. She was white. She eventually stepped aside and let him through, and nobody tried to stop him as he power-walked through the jet bridge. He rushed through the gate, past the baggage claim, into an open corridor that was maddening with people who were clueless about where to go or what to do with themselves. He thought he might explode if he did not get outside soon and away from the chaos and the people who stood in the center of the walkway with their shit strewn about as if they were the only ones in the airport with a connecting flight to catch or somewhere to go. He followed the signs that led him out of the building and into the departure terminal and into the fresh air, which he sucked in as if he had been smothered without it. Which he kind of was. The moon hung high above.

  He found a bench and threw himself on it and screamed into his hands. The energy pent-up within him roared out, and he felt the tension let go as he released it. Drool hung on his lips, but he did not care. He was exhausted. When he looked up, a black man with a funny hat and a bitter grin flashed his eyes at him. Benji looked back and wiped away the saliva, and the man walked off. Benji wanted nothing more than to not be around people anymore. Too many for one day.

  He sat alone for a few minutes. The tension fell further away with each passing moment, and so did his energy. His eyes were heavy. The chaos of the surrounding noise faded into the night.

  A black sedan with dark windows rolled up to the curb and stopped. Benji watched it but did not react. He could barely hold up his head anymore. A mugger could have had his way with him, and Benji would not have put up a fight—take whatever you want, man, just make it quick. The passenger side window of the sedan rolled down and he immediately thought of the man from the airport in eastern Iowa, but he was too fatigued to care about the idea of that too.

  “Hey,” a voice called from inside the sedan. He recognized it.

  “Hey,” he said.

  He forced himself up and shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped toward the vehicle. The door opened from the inside and he slid in. The cushiony seat enveloped him and he felt weightless against it.

  “You look like shit,” Cheyenne said. “What happened to you?”

  “Please shut up,” he said. “Don’t talk. Just drive.”

  Cheyenne smiled and shifted the car into drive and peeled away.

  . . . . .

  It was later. He napped in the car and ate real food and smoked away his stress with the singular joint he smuggled in his rectum. The baggie that held it was immediately discharged, his hands washed, after he retrieved it. His fingers passed the smell test. Cheyenne would not stop talking. He heard about her flight and how anxious she was about her luggage getting lost—which it did not, thank the heavens, or he would not have ever heard the end of it—and about how she killed the afternoon awaiting his arrival. The details were lost on him. She had grabbed his bag too when she landed and brought it with her to the hotel—a surprisingly friendly gesture, he thought, and not one he would have expected from her. He was sure it was for selfish reasons.

  By the next morning, his back still ached from the crummy sofa cushion Cheyenne forced him to sleep on, which neither made sense nor bothered him. She awoke him in the night to ride him then quickly fell back asleep in the ginormous bed by herself while he fought to get comfortable on the tiny sofa. He thought about suffocating her with a pillow while she slept so she would stop snoring, but he somehow restrained himself, though the prospect was tempting.

  Cheyenne woke up, blew him, then showered alone. Benji ravaged through the mini-fridge for anything edible. He was not paying the bill, so he ate everything—the cookies, the candy, the singular brownie that was outdated by more than two days but still tasted like a volcano of chocolaty goodness on his tongue. The sugar rush went straight to his head and manifested itself in a splitting headache, so he guzzled both bottles of water and threw back the shot of Jack. Relaxation eventually caught up and outwilled him.

  When she reappeared from the bathroom—a white towel around her head, another barely covering her lady parts—she asked him not to lay on her pillow because he stunk.

  “They’re going to wash them,” he countered, and she retreated into the steam cave with disgust.

  His balls hurt. And he could smell himself—the sweat where the antiperspirant should have been, the staleness of his breath. So he stood and dropped his pants, lost the shirt, and stumbled into the bathroom. Cheyenne was nude in front of the mirror, examining herself.

  “You’re disgusting,” she said when she noticed him, though she did not take her eyes off herself.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then he cranked the shower handle to the red zone and stepped into the water.

  Beads of liquid heat pelted his skin like magma. A shiver ran through his pores and warmed him from the toes up. He closed his eyes and let the steam take him away.

  “What happened to you yesterday?” Cheyenne asked from the other side of the curtain. “Who was that guy?”

  The man from the airport. “I didn’t catch his name, actually.”

  “What did he want?”

  He considered not telling her but was not prepared to devise a lie. “Just some dude, poking around for information.”

  “What kind of information.”

  Silence.

  The curtain whipped open and Cheyenne stood in front of him, her hands on her naked hips. Two bags of sand hung from her chest. “What kind of information?”

  “Hey, psycho, relax. Just about some stuff I’ve been up to. And about where I was going. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “And about you.”

  “Me! What about me?”

  “I’m sorry, but can you close the curtain? You’re letting all the steam out.”

  She leaned in close—but not too close; the magma pellets made a wall between them. “Do you forget who you’re talking to? What exactly did he ask about me?”

  “He wanted to know who you were, how we know each other. That’s it.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That we’re friends. And we fuck sometimes.”

  She looked down at his manhood and smirked, then back up. The smirk was gone. “What else?”

  “That was it.”

  Her eyes pierced his and held. He was first to blink.

  “Benji? Sweet, sweet Benji. What else did the man have to say?”

  “Well, he did ask about the footage.”

  Her expression changed. Anger. Rage. “That footage?”

  “That footage.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  He knew his answer was bad. Really, really bad. Thankfully, Cheyenne did not have a weapon at her disposal; if she did, he would have been in serious trouble, afraid of what she might do to him. “I told him what he wanted to know.”

  Benji grunted as a stabbing pain rushed through his gut. Cheyenne’s shoulder was wet now, and her hand squeezed as if his manhood were a stress reliever. He was all but incapacitated.

  “Meet me out there in five minutes.”
—she motioned to the sleeping space—”You’re going to tell me exactly what you told him. And then you’re going to tell me how the fuck you plan on getting us out of this mess.”

  She released him and walked out.

  He pressed his back against the tiled shower wall and nursed himself. All the while, water splashed against the floor on the other side of the tub and soaked the mat. His balls hurt too much to think.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The sun was awake and peeking through the curtain. Randolph was up and had been for a while. Usually an early riser, the last few days of sleeping late were unorthodox for him. As his body settled into his new workless routine, not arising in the darkness appealed to him. But he was restless already, and it was only nine o’clock.

  Sheila was curled up in a ball and asleep, unmoved by the intruding light or the disturbance of his shower in the next room. He was starved. Before pocketing the room key and slipping out, he jotted a note for Sheila in case she awoke and wondered where he was and left it on the bedside table. He placed a hand on her hip just to feel her, then left.

  He remembered seeing a coffee and doughnut shop on the drive in—some non-franchised joint, which was usually the best type. He hit the main road and took off the way they came in, filled up his gas tank. The line at the coffee shop was long but not absurd; the employees were friendly. The dough smelled fresh and the display cabinet teased him with treats reserved for a special occasion. He ordered two bottles of water and onion bagels for old time’s sake—or what felt like it. They had only known each other less than a week, but it felt like forever, as if they had gone through hell and back. He was not sure if that was a sign the bond they had formed was strong, or if it was a bad omen for the future.

  He paid for the breakfast and offered his pleasantries and stepped toward the door, but as he reached for the bar, his attention was stolen. High in the corner of the wall, mounted above a shelf with a cable box, was a small television. The morning news was on, and the female anchor teased stories that would follow after the break.

  No, not possible.

  He could not have heard it right.

  He released the bar and retreated inside, stood under the television with his arms crossed, the brown paper bag crammed against his chest.

  No way.

  The commercial break was as long as he could ever remember—fifteen automobile ads; six for mobile phones; another for shaving cream. The longest hand on the clock on the wall stuck as if broken.

  Finally, the newsroom reappeared on the screen and he sprung up, stepped closer to hear better. The tease from before was just that—a tease about a story from neighboring Iowa that had people scratching their heads. In less than thirty seconds it was over. The full story was developing.

  Oh no!

  He rushed out of the shop, nearly pushed the heavy door into a pretty blonde whose head was buried in her phone. She gave him disapproving eyes and he apologized, and he hurried to the truck.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  Patricia was right. There was a tape. If network news in Nebraska had the footage, he could only imagine the circus that was Iowa. A local supermarket exploded in broad daylight with hundreds of shoppers and employees inside, and nobody—at least not as far as he gathered from the broadcast he just saw—knew why. A supermarket he was inside just minutes before the explosion. A supermarket the woman he was with worked in at the time. A woman—might he add—whose grainy face was as clear as day to him in the footage shown.

  What did it all mean?

  He considered all the options without any reasonably coherent conclusions as he hauled ass back to the hotel. After he pulled in and parked, he slowed down to try and calm himself. His heart pounded to the point of him being short of breath. He clutched the steering wheel and took deep breaths.

  Why was he so worked up? He did nothing wrong. He was there, but so were hundreds of others. Sheila was a victim too—far more so than he; she was inside when it happened. Relinquishing control of what felt like his livelihood made him extremely uncomfortable. But still, he did nothing wrong.

  He had to call Larry and try to figure out what was going on. He retrieved his phone and dialed, but there was no answer.

  Damn.

  Breathe. Relax.

  He took another minute until he was good, calm, ready to think and react reasonably. Inside the hotel, the concierge greeted him and welcomed him to the morning. All he could do was offer a halfhearted wave in return; his mind was preoccupied. The elevator ascended as if it were his personal chariot, opening its doors only at the floor Randolph pressed with no stops in between. He stepped into the corridor and wove through the labyrinth of identically wallpapered walls. Some had framed stock photographs of landscapes that had nothing to do with where they were hung on them, while others were bare. There was no noticeable pattern to why or where the frames were hung—some hired interior designer clearly rushed through the job to move onto the next more exciting, more lucrative gig. Randolph swiped the plastic key through the slot on the outside of the door, waited for the screen to illuminate green, and turned the handle.

  The bed was empty, the sheets splayed across the floor. He walked toward the bathroom. The door was closed.

  “Sheila? Are you in there?”

  A few seconds passed. Then the sound of running water came and went, the hinge of a towel rod squeaked, and the door opened.

  “Hi,” Sheila said. She smiled at him. His shirt hung off her shoulders against a dark backdrop.

  “Hi.”

  Her face fell. “What’s the matter?”

  He remembered the bag in his hand. “Hungry? I brought breakfast.”

  She looked at him. Her face was expressionless, emotionless.

  “I got onion. You like onion, right? Last time you ate—”

  “What’s wrong, Randolph? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Was it that obvious? He pushed past her and flipped on the light, gazed at his reflection in the mirror.

  Yikes.

  Not seen a ghost, but was the ghost. He looked disheveled. Terrible.

  Sheila came up behind him and dropped a hand on his shoulder. Her touch sent waves of warmth rushing through his body. The tension fell away. The paper bag slipped out of his hand and crashed against the countertop.

  “What happened?” she asked with the gentlest voice he had ever heard. The voice of an angel. Or maybe just the voice of someone who actually cared.

  He pressed his hands against the counter and leaned forward, dropped his head. “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”

  Sheila was silent behind him but her touch remained. He eventually looked up and caught her reflection. Sadness overtook her face.

  “I think we should go back,” he said.

  “Go back to where?”

  “To Iowa.”

  “Why?”

  He told her about the news broadcast.

  “There’s no reason to go back,” she said. “You did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong.”

  “I have to figure this out.”

  “Isn’t your lawyer working on it?”

  “I tried to call him earlier, but he didn’t answer.”

  “Well, there you go. He has nothing to say, I’m sure. Because you did nothing wrong.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. That’s not it. There’s so much going on, I just need—”

  “We can’t go back, Randolph. We can’t.”

  He sighed. “Why not?”

  “Gary will kill me if we go back.”

  He straightened, turned to fac
e her. “Kill you? Are you that afraid of him?”

  Tears pooled in her eyes. “You have no idea.”

  Well, if you shared . . .

  He grabbed her hand and held it, gazed into her eyes. They stayed like that for a while.

  “What do you suggest then?” Randolph finally said. “If we can’t go back.”

  “Well, I do have an idea, actually. But I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  She was right; he did not. Not really. But he understood it, at least from her perspective. She seemed confident it would work. She led the way—picked the place, drove there, put her cash on the table and told the women inside what the deal was, what they wanted to accomplish. Randolph merely went along and did what he was told.

  The women brought out supplies he had neither seen nor heard of, did things to him he never imagined. He sat in the chair like a doll while women spoke among themselves around him as if he were not in the room; he was nothing but a mannequin, a canvas for their artistic expression. He nearly dozed off while they waited. The final result he disliked on himself, though he thought Sheila looked spectacular.

  “Ten years younger,” she said to him, referencing his appearance afterward. A giant smile caved in her cheeks. She looked happy.

  The man he saw in the mirror was not someone he recognized—bleach blonde hair on his head rather than dark brown; stubble and eyebrows that did not match; wrinkles that were more pronounced than he remembered. It would take him time to get used to the new him. The dramatics did not seem necessary, though he agreed it had a chance to work.

  Sheila was the opposite—from short, straight, and blonde to long, wavy, fiery red extensions. Lust and seduction radiated from her, overtook the room. The other women in the waiting area stared—as much at Randolph as her, he thought. They must have looked ridiculous together—an alluring young woman with a man almost old enough to be her father. She, promiscuous. He, perverted. One of the women eyed him without hiding it, then shook her head and grunted. She did not understand; frankly, neither did he.